Mission Mission

Mission Mission received an email  this morning from Kai Hsing, founder/writer/producer/editor of The Quotidian, an ongoing documentary project that aims to capture how people are finding new ways to create change in their communities.  From Kai:

I thought you should know about our latest story that goes behind the scenes of Mission Street Food, which I know you are familiar with by now. In the video, we not only try to capture what the MSF events are all about, but also visit a couple charitable organizations to see how money donated from the event is being used to benefit the community. Finally, we take a look at how MSF’s charitable model might be replicated in a neighborhood near you, or even elsewhere in the country.

Nice.  Now on with the show:

You can read more here, if so inclined.

San Francisco is awesome because things like Mission Street Food work.  I’m curious to hear about more of these springing up across the country, so if you know a thing, don’t forget to holler.

The Water Front screens tonight at the Roxie as part of Laborfest‘s International Working Class Film & Video Festival. Some publicist was supposed to drop off a screener, but they didn’t, so here’s the boilerplate:

This powerful film by Liz Miller tells the story of the destruction of Highland Park, Michigan, the birthplace of mass production and good paying union jobs for hundreds of thousands of workers. The destruction of this industrial powerhouse leads to corporate schemes to save the city by privatizing the water system. Homeowners start receiving bills for thousands of dollars and face the shutoff of this basic necessity. Some bills reach $10,000. The film follows Vallory Johnson who turns her anger into organizing a grass roots campaign for affordable water as a basic human right.

The literal criminal destruction of tens of thousands of homes in the Detroit area is a stain on the history of the United States. Obviously there is no oil in Detroit, just human beings.

Link to official site. [via funcheapSF]

Mission Mission pal Norm invites us to tonight’s screening of What Would It Mean to Win? at ATA:

Filmed on the blockades at the G8 summit in Heiligendamm, Germany in June 2007. In their first collaborative film Zanny Begg and Oliver Ressler focus on the current state of the counter-globalisation movement in a project which grows out of both artists’ preoccupation with globalisation and its discontents. The film, which combines documentary footage, interviews, and animation sequences, is structured around three questions pertinent to the movement: Who are we? What is our power? What would it mean to win?

Find out tonight. Only $6. Link.

Photo of riot police at Heiligendamm last year by paper_riot.